Tech Talk
Hello, and welcome back to Tech Talk! I say "welcome back" even though this is the first and likely last installment of Tech Talk, but our marketing department (who will soon be laid off, owing to the show's imminent cancellation) advises a forced-friendly approach to mask our lack of savvy. Our marketing department also works for Hillary Clinton. <rimshot>
This last week was a week of fun technology as tech companies ramp up their services in time for the holiday shopping season, which, of course, has nothing to do with it. Let's walk you through them, huh?
First of all, gmail starting rolling out IMAP for all of it's accounts. Now, let me just take a moment to get my judgment finger (you might know yours as your "index finger") out of it's plush, velvet-lined carrying case and wag it in your face while I wonder why in the hell you haven't switched to a gmail address yet. To make a long harangue short: there's no reason not to.
This IMAP development makes it so that it's almost completely unnecessary for me to ever go to the gmail website. But it's brought a big question with it: which email client do I go with? I'll ask you what client you prefer, pretending that you've actually read this far.
What I've found is that email softwares are like banks or cable companies: they all mostly suck with a handful of unique positives. Outlook Express is clunky and awkward, but it has a nice "hide folder" feature. Mac Mail works well and looks nice and has the great feature of having the inbox separately at the top, but remains the shining example of the frustrations that Apple's emphasis on simplicity can bring. Really? Still no previous message or next message buttons? Unbelievable.
It's Thunderbird that's really drawn my ire. After buying into Lifehacker's hype, I gave it a try. Let's just leave it at this: extensions, etcetera aside, I don't see much difference between Thunderbird and the Netscape email I used in 1998. And I've gotten really tired of people like Lifehacker automatically assuming that anything open source is superior. It goes to show that independent coders can be as—if not more—clueless as the programmers being paid to overlook the obvious.
Besides the IMAP thing, I was excited to see that Google Analytics has added in an internal site search component to their Analytics. Besides that fact that it adds to the feeling that Google never stops improving—a feeling that helps me sleep soundly—it's a great improvement for me, mostly professionally. Having the analytics that let you see not only what people are searching for, but how many pages they look at afterwards and how many times they search after getting their initial searches is a site manager's dream.
Because areseven.com is increasingly becoming a playground for the tools I use professionally even if they're of little-to-no use on this page, I put an internal site search on this page. I've nestled it over there in the right nav. It's placed for maximum ignorability, but if you want to go looking for "muppet fucking" or "portal to hell" or "dead bear", it's there for you (once the site gets indexed, that is).
In non-web software news, I upgraded my Mac to the new OS, Leopard. In a word: disappointment. Not only are the cosmetic changes superfluous and ugly, but my computer's suddenly having network connection issues and has made configuration changes where it shouldn't have. Looks like Apple's been hiring away people from Microsoft.
Finally (finally!), you probably didn't even notice when you came here, but I changed the location of this page to blog.areseven.com. And though I've already humped Google's leg enough in this post, you should get your own domain and use Google Apps For Your Domain for all your email needs. They make it so easy.
8 comments:
I am pretty excited about the gmail imap thing too, but, as you can tell from several of my del.icio.us tags, there is a significant issue with imap: it is not displaying most of the messages on windows mobile devices - which is the only reason I really need the imap functionality. Thankfully it looks like a google issue and not a Microsoft one, so it'll probably get resolved sooner rather than later, i.e. before the next 5 Microsoft mobile OS releases.
I still like the gmail web interface though - I've gotten so used to the "conversation" method for message organization that it's hard for me to use Outlook or some other mail client. Plus, Outlook sucks. I wonder if google will come up with their own stand-alone mail program - like the gmail mobile client for cell phones - which is really nice, but doesn't work (easily) on Windows Mobile.
Oh, I would love it if Google came up with a gmail software client. In fact, I'm surprised that they haven't. AdSense is their bread and butter, so the more people that use POP or IMAP, the less people see their ads. I would imagine that they'll come up with something that allows them to serve up the ads.
The only reason that I have external email clients is partly for notification, but mostly so that I can check multiple accounts. It's actually one of the things that I've been shocked that Google has added yet: the ability to easily switch among multiple accounts. With more and more people using their tools in a work environment, you think it'd be a big priority for them.
I have all my work email forwarded to my gmail account, and so everything I do is from gmail. I do have filters to tag the work vs. the other email, but it doesn't seem to get everything...that's probably a "me" issue with my filter though. It is nice that they allow you to designate the sending address though.
The ads are fine by me - sometimes it's kinda funny what comes up for geology stuff.
oh, you probably know this, but for notification you can use google talk.
Reid, please do more of these "Tech Talks" (as long as it doesn't take away from your regularly scheduled blogging on other issues, of course.) Us n00bs needs lots of help.
And apparently we need help with grammer too. Arghhh...
I'm totally fine with the ads, too, Doug. That's how Google gives everything free to us. It's actually kind of fascinating what business has turned into: people making money pointing to people who are trying to make money.
Have you tried Google Apps for the dropstones domain yet? So awesome.
Jen! It's great to get comments from you. And if you have to worry about grammar...oh, Lord. I don't even want to think about me. More often than not, I look back through a post a day later and flush with humiliation over the dumb spelling and grammar mistakes I make, like, say, leaving out entire sections of a sentence.
Anyway, point being that no one's allowed to worry about their spelling and grammar around here. The rule of grammar law is anarchy.
I don't know what the hell you're talking about and I want you to shut up.
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